Two Years On A Basement Mantel: Erwin's Story

My sister's cat Erwin died two years before he found a place in her house.

Not because she didn't care. She cared enormously. He spent those two years on a mantel in the basement, next to his toys, in the tube he came home in.

The tube told her what to do

Erwin came back from the crematory in a compostable tube. That kind of container is made to be buried. It breaks down in soil. It's designed to go into the ground, and by arriving that way it quietly answered a question nobody had asked her.

So the decision had already been made for her, by a business, on a day she wasn't in any condition to argue with it.

And she couldn't do it.

They'd just bought the house

Here's the part I think a lot of people will recognize.

They had just moved in when Erwin died. Her husband wasn't sure he wanted him in the yard. She kept thinking about what happens if they sell. Burying him somewhere is permanent, and the house might not be. Putting him in the ground of a place they might leave felt worse than doing nothing.

They weren't refusing to decide. They were stuck between two things that both felt wrong, which is a different thing entirely, and nobody tells you that's allowed to take two years.

She did go looking

This surprised me when she told me.

She searched for urns. She found plenty. She didn't buy any of them, and her reasons were specific.

They were too cutesy. Cat urns are a category of their own and most of them are shaped like a cat, or painted with paw prints, or decorated in a way that felt nothing like Erwin.

They were too small. Cat urns are sized for exactly the ashes and nothing else.

There was nowhere to put anything with him.

And she couldn't work out how she'd even get him in. No bag, no instructions, no clear answer. Several of the ones she looked at would have meant splitting him between two containers, and she wasn't willing to do that.

So she closed the tabs. And the tube stayed on the basement mantel, next to his toys, for two years.

What actually changed

We lost Abby around the same time.

I made her vessel myself because I couldn't leave her in what she came home in, and I'm a maker, so making something was the only way I knew how to sit with it.

My sister saw it. And she said she wanted one for Erwin.

Not because it was cat-themed. It isn't. Because it was the opposite of everything she'd rejected, and because there was room.

The part she didn't expect

She told me recently that the thing that got her was discovering there was space inside for more than the ashes.

She put in two catnip mice. His favorites, the ones he actually carried around. And a small jar holding a lock of his fur that the vet had given her the day he was put down, which she had kept for two years without knowing what it was for.

That was the moment the object stopped being storage.

Where he is now

He's on the mantel in the living room. Front and center, not tucked at the end.

She's had friends compliment the vessel without knowing what it was, and then go quiet when they realized it was Erwin, sitting in the room with everyone. A couple of them cried.

That's the difference. He came upstairs.

If your cat is still in the tube

Then nothing has gone wrong.

You aren't behind. Ashes don't degrade, nothing has to be decided by a date, and two years is not a failure. Plenty of people are exactly where you are and assume they're the only one.

If you're stuck between burying them and keeping them, you're allowed to stay stuck. Keeping them is not a smaller choice than burying them, and it is completely reversible, which burying is not. You can keep them now and decide something else in five years.

If you went looking and everything felt wrong, that's not you being difficult. Most cat urns are made to look like cats. Some people want that. If you don't, you're not failing to grieve properly.

And if what stopped you was not knowing how you'd even get them in, that's a real problem with how these things are sold, and it has an answer.

One more thing

Erwin sat in a basement for two years, next to his toys, in a tube designed to be put in the ground.

He's upstairs now, with two catnip mice and a lock of his own fur, in the middle of the room.

Nothing about that was too late.

KAPLA Art makes hand finished stone memorial vessels for pets. They aren't cat-shaped or dog-shaped, they're the same for everybody, and there's room inside for more than the ashes. Two sealable pouches and instructions come in the box, because getting them in shouldn't be the part that stops you.